Nightmares
by Pantherlily
Summary: One-shot. Reid-centric. Summary inside. Rated T to be safe.


Author's Note:

This fic is inspired by episode 1X10, The Popular Kids, and episode 6X12, Corazon. Obviously, this has spoilers for those episodes but expect spoilers for anything that's happened to Reid period. I know 6X18, Lauren, hasn't aired yet but it takes place after that. Vague references to it by the end of the fic. First person POV, via Reid, who decides to keep a journal. One-shot drabble. I hope you enjoy! Please review!

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"_Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.__"- Fulton Oursler _

March, 2011

This seems a little silly to me. I have an eidetic memory after all. But I have confession to make. I'm scared, terrified really. I feel like it's all slipping away from me, my mind in particular. I guess that's why I started this journal. So I could always remember, if my mind someday ended up failing me. You have to understand, this is a crippling and paralyzing fear of mine. My mind has been the most reliable thing in my entire life and if I lost it, I'd lose myself in the process. I suppose I also started this to help me understand why this is all happening to me. Perhaps I should start where I suspect it may have all started and from there things just started adding up.

A little over six years ago I started having nightmares. I was ashamed of them at first, but in hindsight I shouldn't have been. The job I have isn't exactly easy. Don't get me wrong, I love my job. The few victories that we make as a team is what make the job worth it. And everything else is just, well, horrific. Day in and day out, we see atrocities humans make against each other. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the gruesomeness and stress of my job reached my subconscious while I slept. Grant it, I'd been in a hostage situation twice before the nightmares started. That probably didn't help. Anyway, I think the nightmares are what started this all because since then they seem to be more frequent with every passing year.

A colleague, though cleared by the investigators, had killed a man in cold blood. I knew it, the whole team knew it. I feel that maybe I should have been able to stop it somehow. I'd seen the warning signs. I even talked to Elle. I've spent many nights wrestling with the what if's, despite Morgan telling me not to worry about it.

There was this boy, who came to me for help. He was worried about his impulse and need to kill. In effort to stop himself, he tried to commit suicide. I saved his life. I can still see his blood all over me. I wonder, did I do the right thing? The boy was a serial killer in the making, even Gideon thought so. I either have nightmares that the boy dies despite all of my efforts or the boy goes on to a prolific serial killer, and I'm never able to stop him, leaving me responsible for all the victim's lives he takes.

Easily my worst memory, is having been kidnapped and tortured. I should have died that day. I try not to think about it. I almost let one incident destroy me. I became addicted to Dilaudid. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I'd almost given up everything I had for a quick fix. But I was stronger than the addiction and sought help when it was clear I was slipping. I thought I was in control, but the truth was that the drug controlled me. It had helped stop the plaguing nightmares it caused. The scenes forever flashing in my mind, even when I was awake. Eventually, I got clean and admittedly the craving is there some days, but since giving up the drug I haven't used again. And I won't. Never again will I fall victim to its euphoric effects.

I've lost my mentor. He was more than that. He was a colleague, a friend, a surrogate father. I miss him every day. I carry his letter with me in my wallet, even though I know it verbatim. It's the only tangible connection I have to Gideon. I have a chess board set up in my apartment ready to be played, just in case he randomly drops by one day. I realize this is extremely unlikely but life is full of surprises and I guess I just have to have faith that one day he will return. I have nightmares about the night I found his note, but instead of the cabin being empty I find his body with his brains blown out and the blood splatter all over the room. Just thinking about those nightmares gives me chills.

I once tried to talk a father out of killing a man who had kidnapped his daughter and killed his daughter's friend. The daughter begging her dad to kill the man, was one of the most disturbing things I've seen. That probably sounds strange, given everything I've seen and bared witness to. But listening to teenage girl beg her dad to kill someone is a sad sight to behold. I tried to reason with father but I had failed. I watched helplessly as the father murdered the man. Talk about nightmares that keep me up at night.

I almost lost my job, for putting myself in the line of fire of my team to the unsub. Hotch had been pissed at me, but I didn't care. I needed to save him. I saw myself in the kid. I understood what it was like to be bullied. To be humiliated, mocked, ridiculed. Grant it, I went the other way with my life but that didn't mean I didn't understand what he was going through. His profile had indicated he'd rather go out in hail of bullets. I couldn't let that happen. I had to save him and I did. But nonetheless, for a week straight I had nightmares that I'd failed and I watch from the sidelines as the kid gets gunned down. It's like a movie and everything happens in slow motion.

It was bound to happen, I guess. We got a case in Vegas, my hometown. It brought back memories I'd suppressed as a child. Even though the case had been solved I'd stayed behind in Vegas to try and make sense of the memories of a boy named Riley who had been killed when I was a kid. To my surprise Rossi and Morgan had stayed behind as well. They helped me work through the memories, even though it seemed to be my father behind the killings. While he hadn't been the killer, like I thought, it was the reason he had left my mother and I. It turns out my mother had witnessed a murder and my dad was just trying to protect by burning the bloody clothes. The truth had been more shocking than my initial conclusion. I know I have abandonment issues because of this and every now and then, I have nightmares that both my parents leave me and I'm left completely alone to fend for myself.

I'm determined to save Adam. One day I'll get through and I'll free him from Amanda. I should have recognized it sooner. After Tobias Hankle, I should have been able to see it. If I had, Adam could have been saved. I still visit, attempting to get through to Adam. I feel responsible for Adam being locked out of his own mind. I have nightmares of Amanda taunting me and though it is physically impossible, short of suicide, I watch as she kills Adam and there is nothing I can do to stop her.

Being exposed to anthrax, another near death experience. The look in Morgan's eyes as I locked him out was heartbreaking. But I couldn't let him in. There was no sense in both of us dying. We're like brothers, and I can only imagine how he must have felt. In this nightmare, Morgan's the one stuck inside and we can't find a vaccine and I watch him die slowly through the glass.

I got shot in the leg about a year ago, protecting a doctor from a grieving father. Up until this point, all my nightmares were of those around me dying but now I'm the one dying. Instead of getting shot in the leg, I get shot in the chest. The team watches as I die, the blood pouring on the grass. First time I had that nightmare, I woke up screaming. Not because I was dying but because of the feelings the team was radiating. Their sense of sadness was so overwhelming, I could still feel it when I woke up.

Now, I have these accursed migraines. I wonder if maybe the nightmares are connected to the migraines somehow. Is the stress of the job filtering into conscious life now? I got an MRI but it revealed nothing biological. Could it be a precursor to schizophrenia? Am I going to end up like my mother? I've been doing research on migraines but it isn't helping. I need to understand what is going on with me. Facts and statistics are what I base my life off of and not knowing is killing me on the inside.

I haven't told anyone on the team. Well, except for Prentiss. Except for my doctors, she is the only one who knows at all. I don't think the team realizes, that I've grown up since I joined the BAU. I'm not a little kid that they need to worry about and protect. I know they respect me and my intellect but I'm still the youngest on the team. I'm still the baby in their eyes. So, I haven't told them. They'd only fret and worry over me and that's not what I want. I'm a man now and I've grown a lot since I started out. I want to tell them but right now things are a little crazy with what's going on with Emily. They have enough to worry about, so for now I keep it to myself.


End file.
